Its colonel, young Fezenzac, contrived to infuse fresh life into these men who were half perished with cold.  There, as in every thing that can be called action, was manifested the superiority of the sentiments of the soul over the sensations of the body; for every physical sensation tended to encourage despondency and flight; nature advised it with her hundred most urgent voices; and yet a few words of honour were sufficient to produce the most heroic devotedness.  The soldiers of the 4th regiment rushed like furies upon the enemy, against the mountain of snow and ice of which he had taken possession, and in the teeth of the northern hurricane, for they had every thing against them.  Ney himself was obliged to moderate their impetuosity.

A reproach from their colonel effected this change.  These private soldiers devoted themselves, that they might not be wanting to their own characters, from that instinct which requires courage in a man, as well as from habit and the love of glory.  A splendid word for so obscure a situation!  For, what is the glory of a common soldier, who perishes unseen, who is neither praised, censured, nor regretted, but by his own division of a company!  The circle of each, however, is sufficient for him:  a small society embraces the same passions as a large one.  The proportions of the bodies differ; but they are composed of the same elements; it is the same life that animates them, and the looks of a platoon stimulate a soldier, just as those of an army inflame a general.

CHAP.  XIV.

At length the army again beheld Smolensk; it approached the term so often held forth to its sufferings.  The soldiers pointed it out to each other.  There was that land of promise where their famine was to find abundance, their fatigue rest; where bivouacs in a cold of nineteen degrees would be forgotten in houses warmed by good fires.  There they should enjoy refreshing sleep; there they might repair their apparel; there they should be furnished with new shoes and garments adapted to the climate.

At this sight, the corps d’elite, some soldiers, and the veteran regiments, alone kept their ranks; the rest ran forward with all possible speed.  Thousands of men, chiefly unarmed, covered the two steep banks of the Borysthenes:  they crowded in masses round the lofty walls and gates of the city; but their disorderly multitude, their haggard faces, begrimed with dirt and smoke, their tattered uniforms and the grotesque habiliments which they had substituted for them, in short, their strange, hideous look, and their extreme ardour, excited alarm.  It was conceived that if the irruption of this crowd, maddened with hunger, were not repelled, a general pillage would be the consequence, and the gates were closed against it.

It was also hoped that by this rigour these men would be forced to rally.  A horrid struggle between order and disorder then commenced in the remnant of that unfortunate army.  In vain did some entreat, weep, conjure, threaten, strive to burst the gates, and drop down dead at the feet of their comrades, who had orders to repel them; they found them inexorable:  they were forced to await the arrival of the first troops, who were still officered and in order.